Zoo goes wild with sweeping upgrade projects.

Snacking on carrots and dragging a leafy branch around his small dirt yard the other day, Billy, the Los Angeles Zoo's 19-year-old Indian elephant, surely must have had a hint something was up.

He may have been wondering what happened to Ruby and Gita, the two female elephants who until recently lived in an adjacent enclosure, or why that site now was occupied by a bulldozer. Then again, Billy, whose yard sits at ground zero in the latest plan to remake the Griffith Park institution, may have just been daydreaming about greener pastures to come.

As construction crews hustle to finish a sea lion exhibit, children's center and zoo entranceway in time for summer, work has begun on lush new habitats for elephants, hippopotami and gorillas. These projects could all be finished by the end of 2005.

In addition, groundbreaking is tentatively planned for next year on a South American rain forest exhibit and a new reptile and insect house at the 38-year-old zoo.

All told, the new projects carry a price tag in excess of $80 million--most of it funded by a trio of city and county parks and zoo bonds approved by voters between 1996 and 1998. Those bonds--County Proposition A2 and city propositions K and CC--are providing $67.6 million of the total.

About $3 million more is coming from the Department of Water & Power for infrastructure improvements; the zoo's fund-raising arm, the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association, is responsible for coming up with the rest.

The new projects come in addition to a children's zoo, and rebuilt habitats for chimpanzees and orangutans that opened in the past six years.

Those changes have helped to repair an image that was sullied in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of outdated facilities and ineffective management. In the mid-1990s, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association delayed accreditation.

The accreditation issue is long since settled, but some problems persist, including an unusually high number of animal escapes. Still, John Lewis, who was named zoo director last June, said the institution has made strides in both animal care and providing a quality visitor experience.

"This is the next step in the zoo's evolution. A lot of it has to do with aesthetics and education," he said. "It's the next step in keeping up with the technology and with the expectations of the public."

The zoo's fundraising activities were also in question. In 2002, City Controller Laura Chick released a report criticizing GLAZA for failing to meet its fund-raising goals and for not fully disclosing how it spent $7.3 million that it raised over several years.

GLAZA President Connie Morgan, a former head of fundraising for Los Angeles Opera who was hired two months before that audit came out, acknowledged that "the zoo and the zoo association had some kinks to work out in their relationship, and they have. "Now we are all marching in the same direction."

Questions of care

Opened in 1966 with the backing of a $6.6 million city bond measure, the 113-acre Los Angeles Zoo replaced an earlier zoo in Griffith Park. The new zoo showed its progressive stripes by becoming the first in the nation to ban the feeding of animals.

But by the 1980s, the facility was showing its age. Metal cages and stark concrete habitats that housed most of the animals had been replaced at better zoos by living quarters that tried to replicate natural environments.

Jane Ballentine, spokeswoman for the Zoo and Aquarium Association, said the hiring of Manuel Mollinedo as zoo director in 1995 marked a turning point for the institution. (Mollinedo resigned in 2002 to head the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and left that job last month to become director of the San Francisco Zoo.)

"A lot of the problems were with infrastructure, things that weren't built the right way," Ballentine said. "By all accounts that has completely turned around. The city has been smart in attracting people who know the business."

But not everyone is as confident about the way the zoo is being managed.

Gretchen Wyler, vice president of the Humane Society United States' Hollywood office, is one of the few zoo outsiders on the institution's Animal Welfare Committee, a position she has held for six years.

She supports a lawsuit filed against the zoo by a local animal rights activist that alleges cruelty in the decision to send the African elephant Ruby to the Knoxville Zoo, and away from her longtime stablemate Gita. The zoo has filed a motion for summary judgment in the case with a hearing scheduled for March.

Zoo officials, who intend to obtain new Asian elephants when the $12 million Pachyderm Forest is finished next year, said the move was necessary to achieve the goal of species-specific collections.

"I believe there has been a total misrepresentation. They used conservation as a justification," said Wyler. "I don't want to be lectured about species and conservation. I care about individual animals."

Nevertheless, Wyler agreed that conditions for animals have improved in recent years.

An early step in the zoo's makeover was the opening of the $5 million Chimpanzees of Mahale Mountains in 1998, which blended a spacious exhibit with hills, lawns and a water-fall with a variety of vantage points for viewing the animals.

Expensive digs

After the Pachyderm Forest opens in mid-2005; comes the $7 million Campo Gorilla Reserve, which will include two enclosures and is slated to open by late 2005 or early 2006. The reptile and insect house will follow that. Funding has already been secured from Proposition CC.

"It's a lot of money and we need to show good stewardship," Lewis said of the bond funds. "We need to show the public that we are being responsible with their money."

Although the bulk of the new exhibits will be covered by bond money, GLAZA has set a goal of raising $18 million to enhance those projects with extras like viewing stands and a "bull barn" for the elephants.

So far, the association has raised about $10.1 million. Some projects are more troublesome than others. For example, GLAZA has only raised $2.7 million of the $4.8 million it seeks for the children's center, with the opening just six months away. But the organization has raised $5.8 million of the $7.5 million it seeks for the gorilla display.

"You go around town and you don't hear people talking about the zoo," Morgan said. "It's the zoo association's charge to convince people that the zoo is a place for philanthropy."

Although the zoo has managed to keep all of its animal exhibits open during construction except the gorillas, disruptions to visitors are a major concern. After seeing its attendance rise on average 10 percent a year into 2002, zoo admissions have flattened out over the past 18 months and are expected to dip slightly for fiscal 2003-2004.